![[ CRACKTOWN ]](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ETCSVDAp_cw/TfSlJiIZX9I/AAAAAAAABQc/LVSSR1j6rj8/s660/00%2B-%2BBanner.jpg)
Leon. If you are reading this, please don’t do anything to Calum. I know that you have him - you must have him. I, too, understand your point of view, and fail to understand the foolishness, rage and, yes, sheer stupidity of these kids, but he doesn’t deserve your cruel, unjust treatment.
Please show us that he is okay. He has a Mother, for God's sake.
Senior Scythe
[Home]
Wednesday
A Plea
Calum? - Why, here he is...
Well, Senior, how did you guess I bumped into Calum recently? Yes, I did run into him, actually. At the Drug Pit. He was doing some kind of reportage for this fucking blog. Pathetic hoodie chav. The only thing they’re good for is a slow, blunt-cut beheading. Maybe a scalping and skinning too, thrown in for good measure? Fuck him. He wept for his Mother as soon as I punched him down to the ground. His screams soon stopped, I promise you. He didn’t suffer unduly. I couldn’t hang about in that area too long, so I just removed his head and discarded his body behind that ground-level Sony Eriksson billboard on the Passway there, y’know? He still had his ‘cool’ graffiti mouth apparatus on, or whatever it is.
I offered his rotting meat-head to the Tall Ones down the Alley this week. Yes, it goes without saying that I found the exit to the trapdoor. They were too chickenshit to show themselves. To face me. I offered his whole fucking head and various sections of his wretched skin and they turned their noses up at the offering. Why??????????????????????????????????????? He was a prize scumchav, if ever there was one. Ungrateful bastards. I piss on them. I am the Deaths-head.
So, you want to see Calum, do you?
Why, here he is, the little devil!…
Evens
[Roaming WAN]
Calum: 'Resting in Colour'
Calum: 'Resting in Colour'[these photograms and items of vital public interest are kept online for your information by Quicklime News, Old Lynn's only trustworthy local news node]
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MISSING
You would have all read, seen, or heard about Polly’s disappearance by now, from the various local and national media nodes but, right here on this Polly-founded blog, I wish to air my thoughts and feelings about my esteemed colleague during this time of darkness.
Polly is an exceptional character, of infinite merit and charming demeanour. She has done some of the best quality reporting any local newspaper could ever hope to have featured. Wherever you are, Polly, please contact us and let us know you are okay. I know that the majority of Cracktown has suffered massive powercuts and blackouts these last few days but, as you know, as a self-maintaining building complex, we are still up and running with our own generator source to bring news and celebrity gossip to the masses 24/7, so you can still contact us at anytime Polly - around the clock.
From all of our staff, Polly, we miss you dearly and we all hope that you are okay.
Get in contact with us soon.
Best wishes,
Polly is an exceptional character, of infinite merit and charming demeanour. She has done some of the best quality reporting any local newspaper could ever hope to have featured. Wherever you are, Polly, please contact us and let us know you are okay. I know that the majority of Cracktown has suffered massive powercuts and blackouts these last few days but, as you know, as a self-maintaining building complex, we are still up and running with our own generator source to bring news and celebrity gossip to the masses 24/7, so you can still contact us at anytime Polly - around the clock.
From all of our staff, Polly, we miss you dearly and we all hope that you are okay.
Get in contact with us soon.
Best wishes,
P. EkeDeputy Editor
[Office]
Quicklime News
Tuesday
The Domino Effect of Doom
'We The Dogs'As you may have seen from the front pages of the last six editions of Quicklime News, gang-related intimidation and incidents of general yobbery in the area are ever-present. Old Lynn does indeed have its fair share of anti-social troubles, like most other large towns of course, but I personally wanted to delve deeper into recent local tragedies; to pull together some seemingly unrelated incidents of criminal behaviour recently reported in Cracktown; to try to make some coherent sense of the whole bloody mess.
In December 2011 there were four incidents of shootings (three fatal), one stabbing, and two strangulations in the town. Which, of course, is a slight improvement on previous months, but a terrible statistic nonetheless.
Shortly after beginning my research into the above incidents I quickly became aware of the doomed domino effect that had Cracktown in its grip over the festive period last year. It all started back when the Old Lynn Mall was open for its first late-night Christmas shopping stint in the first week of December.
A gang of five males were clearly seen on CCTV loitering near the mall entrance at around 8.15pm. The young hoodie I met up with last Tuesday, Dave X, was there – and recounts the incident exclusively for Quicklime News;
“Well, we were all gathered there to compare our Christmas present wish-lists, minding our own business, when this strange nutter violently rams into Tariq’s heels with his trolley. Maybe this geezer was a pensioner, but we couldn’t be having that. When someone runs into you with a shopping trolley – well, that is a clear sign of disrespect. So we shot him. Only once, and only in his leg, mind. We’re very fair lads, really. Then we forced him to take us to his house in Ashes Wicked. His daughter greeted us with more disrespect, so we had to strangle her with their phoneline. Then we abused her in very colourful ways. If they had been cool about us from the get-go, none of that had to happen. At the end of the day they brought it all on themselves.”
I caught up with a fellow member of this notorious Cracktown streetgang (the Biggins Posse) yesterday, Mr. Anon E. Mus, who added; “The bloke’s daughter took a while to stop breathing. But, as soon as we heard the death rattle, our trousers came down and we had a giggle with her. Some of your readers may think that was fairly heavy going, but living on the streets is tough, man. You have to survive somehow, my friend. Anyway, after our bit of fun, we stopped her father from watching our session by head-butting the bastard as hard as each of us could. Although we all waited in line to give the geezer a butt, I can tell you it definitely hurt us more than it did him. I remember Damon’s eyes were watering after that last cracking head-butt, and I don’t think it was from the laughter that came from his mouth. We swiftly walked away from their flame-engulfed bungalow an hour later, I swear.”
But that’s when things really got confused. The Biggins Posse ran into NLP, a vicious teen gang from Cracktown North. Anon E. Mus continues;
“Yeah. We were supposed to be legging it from the scene of our bungalow burglary when we ran into the NLP gang on the street outside. A small scuffle started. That quickly stopped when we realised that, because we all dressed the same, sounded the same, and had similar names, we were confused as to who we were hitting. Gaz in NLP was constantly being confused with Gazza in the Biggins Posse, for instance. Both gangs wore their beige hoods up and Nike socks on over their trainers. Both said their trademark Jamaican-esque “innit” at the end of each sentence. Well, we swiftly got to the point where we didn’t know who we were thumping.”
After the Mall shooting, and the two strangulations in the Bungalow (all committed by the Biggins Posse), it was the NLP who performed the next grave physical misdemeanour. To find out what that was, I arranged to see the leader of the NLP to ask him for his version of events on that terrible night. Here’s the transcript of our meeting in Carroll Prison cellblock Z540 earlier this week;
PB: “Hello. You must be Dingle Dongle Esq.?...”
DD: “That’s me, aiiiight.”
PB: “Oh. Hi. My name is Polly. I’m from Quicklime News. Is it convenient….”
DD: “Pull up a pew, me biatch. Wot you wanna know?”
PB: “First of all, your name is ‘Dingle Dongle esq.’, originally from Cape Town right? That is correct?”
DD: “Aiiiight.”
PB: “Well, I sincerely apologise. My dossier on you is obviously wrong. My notes say your name is Sebastian Barrington, an Eton-educated Caucasian from Pluckley, Kent. An heir to the soap-on-a-rope industry in fact.”
DD: “My patience is runnin’ out, la. Whatcha wanna know, like?”
PB: “What was that??? You sounded Liverpudlian then. Something wrong with your vocal chords?”
DD: “…”
PB: “Tell me about your encounter with the Biggins Posse in the first week of December.”
DD: "Well, nothin’s been the same after that run-in. We did literally bump into each other in that street. That proved fatal to us – not because of any puny physical threat on their behalf, you understand. Its just that, when both gangs intermingled, there was a mix up – and there has been ever since, if I can be brutally honest.”
DD: “What kind of ‘mix-up’?”
PB: “Well, we looked quite similar to each other, for starters. The NLP has gang members Gaz, Tariq, Baz, Damien, and myself. The Biggins gang has Gazza, Bariq, Daz (Dave X), Damon, and Anon E. Mus. Because of our identical clothing, our same street phrasing, our graffiti names similar, our bling matching, and our acne mirror-riddled, we got mixed up. Gazza was punching Gaz, Tariq was holding Dariq while Damien kicked him in the pancreas. Anon E. Mus was hitting himself in a frenzied attack with a broken baseball bat for some reason, and I just didn’t know where to turn. It was then that a fellow member of our team, I honestly forget who, produced a Gurkha knife and killed….well, it was either Gaz or Gazza.”
PB: “It was Gaz who died, as you should know. He was in your gang.”
DD: “Really? [counts fingers on his right hand and whispers indecipherably to himself] So it was! I’m Sorry. Everything is so up in the air at the moment. What with Baz’s funeral tomorrow…Well…when I say ‘Baz’, I mean Tariq.”
PB: “You mean, of course, Damien; the boy who was recently shot in the neck as he urinated in the street.”
DD: “THAT’S the chap!”
PB: “So, what happened next?”
DD: “Well, after the grisly incident on the street, we held a team meeting (later that night, I think it was). Anyway, we quickly realised that something was wrong. We were a gang of five, down to four after the stabbing of Gaz, but there were seven of us at the meeting - crammed into our team shed like sardines in hoods. A miscalculation had clearly taken place. It took us six hours to work out who should have been there and who were, in fact, members of our rival gang. Things got quite heated, I can tell you.”
PB: “How did it all finally get resolved?”
DD: “we just pulled out our pistols and shot in the general direction of each other, and whoever came up smiling stayed in the shed until dawn.”
PB: “Some say chavdom, and gang culture in the UK in general, is nothing but an Americanised thus bastardised regression to childhood, with self-repressed alpha males as primates exercising denial of their sexual inadequacy by gorging on violence towards fellow apes and innocent members of the public alike. Would that be a fair judgement of the small series of unlikely events that started in Cracktown from that week onwards?”
DD: “No.”
And there we have it. A catalyst for what was to come before Christmas Day. After the NLP lost gang members Gaz and Damien in ludicrously haphazard acts of street warfare, there was to be a final, fatal series of events on Christmas Eve. In retaliation for the perceived disrespect dished out by the Biggins Posse, even though the NLP had murdered two of their own gang members by mistake, a large platter of payback was to be served up. Cold.
The NLP, led by Dingle Dongle Esq., gathered and loitered near the town centre grotto at 7.01pm. The CCTV footage clearly shows Dongle, Baz and Tariq all dressed up as Father Christmas; their wispy-white beards and furry white collars worn in a clear effort to prevent another perilous mistaken identity crisis. What they didn’t count on was the fact that the Consortium of Santa Impersonators (C.S.I.) was holding a street march that very night to celebrate the festive season. Lady Luck does not look upon the NLP with fondness, it seems.
With their girlfriends in tow, the Biggins Posse turned up with a swagger and were soon chased by the small band of St. Nick’s and eventually surrounded near Paradise Lane. In all fairness to the Biggins Posse, they had no clue as to what the hell was going on. Anon E. Mus later reported in court that his gang members all thought the end of the world was upon them; “All these nutter Santas coming up to us and Ho Ho Ho-ing our asses. We didn’t know what was going down, man. We thought there had been some kind of chemical spillage or sumink. Mental images of flying fake beards and torn blood-red suits. I couldn’t sleep for two days after that confrontation, like.”
In fact, it was more than a confrontation. It was a bloodbath. Two NLP gang members, Baz and Tariq were shot down mercilessly, allegedly by Dongle himself in some kind of confused and unstoppable red-mist pistol rage. It was 7.31pm when a group of 50 tanked-up Father Christmases descended on the scene. This particular group of sozzled Santas saw the shootings from a distance when their CSI Festive March turned down Norfolk Street, and immediately rushed to help what was seemingly a bearded comrade in grave danger.
One grinning onlooker said at the time; “There was this massive surging and violent pulling of beards, buckled belts and red cloth. It was like some kind of unruly Socialist swingers party.”
Never in the history of Cracktown has there been such a bizarre display of supreme violence. By the end of the mass brawl of misunderstanding (some two hours later), the tally of the victims of this unholy festival of street fighting was clear; the death toll of Baz Tweedy and Tariq Andre was added to by a whole variety of horrific injuries suffered by all involved (gouged eyes, ripped cheeks, severe blood loss, etc.), though most were thankfully not life-threatening.
Add to that terrible tally the damaged psyches of 23 children who witnessed the Xtreme Xmas carnage and, like the children themselves must now think, our Christmases may never be quite the same again.
In December 2011 there were four incidents of shootings (three fatal), one stabbing, and two strangulations in the town. Which, of course, is a slight improvement on previous months, but a terrible statistic nonetheless.
Shortly after beginning my research into the above incidents I quickly became aware of the doomed domino effect that had Cracktown in its grip over the festive period last year. It all started back when the Old Lynn Mall was open for its first late-night Christmas shopping stint in the first week of December.
A gang of five males were clearly seen on CCTV loitering near the mall entrance at around 8.15pm. The young hoodie I met up with last Tuesday, Dave X, was there – and recounts the incident exclusively for Quicklime News;
“Well, we were all gathered there to compare our Christmas present wish-lists, minding our own business, when this strange nutter violently rams into Tariq’s heels with his trolley. Maybe this geezer was a pensioner, but we couldn’t be having that. When someone runs into you with a shopping trolley – well, that is a clear sign of disrespect. So we shot him. Only once, and only in his leg, mind. We’re very fair lads, really. Then we forced him to take us to his house in Ashes Wicked. His daughter greeted us with more disrespect, so we had to strangle her with their phoneline. Then we abused her in very colourful ways. If they had been cool about us from the get-go, none of that had to happen. At the end of the day they brought it all on themselves.”
I caught up with a fellow member of this notorious Cracktown streetgang (the Biggins Posse) yesterday, Mr. Anon E. Mus, who added; “The bloke’s daughter took a while to stop breathing. But, as soon as we heard the death rattle, our trousers came down and we had a giggle with her. Some of your readers may think that was fairly heavy going, but living on the streets is tough, man. You have to survive somehow, my friend. Anyway, after our bit of fun, we stopped her father from watching our session by head-butting the bastard as hard as each of us could. Although we all waited in line to give the geezer a butt, I can tell you it definitely hurt us more than it did him. I remember Damon’s eyes were watering after that last cracking head-butt, and I don’t think it was from the laughter that came from his mouth. We swiftly walked away from their flame-engulfed bungalow an hour later, I swear.”
But that’s when things really got confused. The Biggins Posse ran into NLP, a vicious teen gang from Cracktown North. Anon E. Mus continues;
“Yeah. We were supposed to be legging it from the scene of our bungalow burglary when we ran into the NLP gang on the street outside. A small scuffle started. That quickly stopped when we realised that, because we all dressed the same, sounded the same, and had similar names, we were confused as to who we were hitting. Gaz in NLP was constantly being confused with Gazza in the Biggins Posse, for instance. Both gangs wore their beige hoods up and Nike socks on over their trainers. Both said their trademark Jamaican-esque “innit” at the end of each sentence. Well, we swiftly got to the point where we didn’t know who we were thumping.”
After the Mall shooting, and the two strangulations in the Bungalow (all committed by the Biggins Posse), it was the NLP who performed the next grave physical misdemeanour. To find out what that was, I arranged to see the leader of the NLP to ask him for his version of events on that terrible night. Here’s the transcript of our meeting in Carroll Prison cellblock Z540 earlier this week;
PB: “Hello. You must be Dingle Dongle Esq.?...”
DD: “That’s me, aiiiight.”
PB: “Oh. Hi. My name is Polly. I’m from Quicklime News. Is it convenient….”
DD: “Pull up a pew, me biatch. Wot you wanna know?”
PB: “First of all, your name is ‘Dingle Dongle esq.’, originally from Cape Town right? That is correct?”
DD: “Aiiiight.”
PB: “Well, I sincerely apologise. My dossier on you is obviously wrong. My notes say your name is Sebastian Barrington, an Eton-educated Caucasian from Pluckley, Kent. An heir to the soap-on-a-rope industry in fact.”
DD: “My patience is runnin’ out, la. Whatcha wanna know, like?”
PB: “What was that??? You sounded Liverpudlian then. Something wrong with your vocal chords?”
DD: “…”
PB: “Tell me about your encounter with the Biggins Posse in the first week of December.”
DD: "Well, nothin’s been the same after that run-in. We did literally bump into each other in that street. That proved fatal to us – not because of any puny physical threat on their behalf, you understand. Its just that, when both gangs intermingled, there was a mix up – and there has been ever since, if I can be brutally honest.”
DD: “What kind of ‘mix-up’?”
PB: “Well, we looked quite similar to each other, for starters. The NLP has gang members Gaz, Tariq, Baz, Damien, and myself. The Biggins gang has Gazza, Bariq, Daz (Dave X), Damon, and Anon E. Mus. Because of our identical clothing, our same street phrasing, our graffiti names similar, our bling matching, and our acne mirror-riddled, we got mixed up. Gazza was punching Gaz, Tariq was holding Dariq while Damien kicked him in the pancreas. Anon E. Mus was hitting himself in a frenzied attack with a broken baseball bat for some reason, and I just didn’t know where to turn. It was then that a fellow member of our team, I honestly forget who, produced a Gurkha knife and killed….well, it was either Gaz or Gazza.”
PB: “It was Gaz who died, as you should know. He was in your gang.”
DD: “Really? [counts fingers on his right hand and whispers indecipherably to himself] So it was! I’m Sorry. Everything is so up in the air at the moment. What with Baz’s funeral tomorrow…Well…when I say ‘Baz’, I mean Tariq.”
PB: “You mean, of course, Damien; the boy who was recently shot in the neck as he urinated in the street.”
DD: “THAT’S the chap!”
PB: “So, what happened next?”
DD: “Well, after the grisly incident on the street, we held a team meeting (later that night, I think it was). Anyway, we quickly realised that something was wrong. We were a gang of five, down to four after the stabbing of Gaz, but there were seven of us at the meeting - crammed into our team shed like sardines in hoods. A miscalculation had clearly taken place. It took us six hours to work out who should have been there and who were, in fact, members of our rival gang. Things got quite heated, I can tell you.”
PB: “How did it all finally get resolved?”
DD: “we just pulled out our pistols and shot in the general direction of each other, and whoever came up smiling stayed in the shed until dawn.”
PB: “Some say chavdom, and gang culture in the UK in general, is nothing but an Americanised thus bastardised regression to childhood, with self-repressed alpha males as primates exercising denial of their sexual inadequacy by gorging on violence towards fellow apes and innocent members of the public alike. Would that be a fair judgement of the small series of unlikely events that started in Cracktown from that week onwards?”
DD: “No.”
And there we have it. A catalyst for what was to come before Christmas Day. After the NLP lost gang members Gaz and Damien in ludicrously haphazard acts of street warfare, there was to be a final, fatal series of events on Christmas Eve. In retaliation for the perceived disrespect dished out by the Biggins Posse, even though the NLP had murdered two of their own gang members by mistake, a large platter of payback was to be served up. Cold.
The NLP, led by Dingle Dongle Esq., gathered and loitered near the town centre grotto at 7.01pm. The CCTV footage clearly shows Dongle, Baz and Tariq all dressed up as Father Christmas; their wispy-white beards and furry white collars worn in a clear effort to prevent another perilous mistaken identity crisis. What they didn’t count on was the fact that the Consortium of Santa Impersonators (C.S.I.) was holding a street march that very night to celebrate the festive season. Lady Luck does not look upon the NLP with fondness, it seems.
With their girlfriends in tow, the Biggins Posse turned up with a swagger and were soon chased by the small band of St. Nick’s and eventually surrounded near Paradise Lane. In all fairness to the Biggins Posse, they had no clue as to what the hell was going on. Anon E. Mus later reported in court that his gang members all thought the end of the world was upon them; “All these nutter Santas coming up to us and Ho Ho Ho-ing our asses. We didn’t know what was going down, man. We thought there had been some kind of chemical spillage or sumink. Mental images of flying fake beards and torn blood-red suits. I couldn’t sleep for two days after that confrontation, like.”
In fact, it was more than a confrontation. It was a bloodbath. Two NLP gang members, Baz and Tariq were shot down mercilessly, allegedly by Dongle himself in some kind of confused and unstoppable red-mist pistol rage. It was 7.31pm when a group of 50 tanked-up Father Christmases descended on the scene. This particular group of sozzled Santas saw the shootings from a distance when their CSI Festive March turned down Norfolk Street, and immediately rushed to help what was seemingly a bearded comrade in grave danger.
One grinning onlooker said at the time; “There was this massive surging and violent pulling of beards, buckled belts and red cloth. It was like some kind of unruly Socialist swingers party.”
Never in the history of Cracktown has there been such a bizarre display of supreme violence. By the end of the mass brawl of misunderstanding (some two hours later), the tally of the victims of this unholy festival of street fighting was clear; the death toll of Baz Tweedy and Tariq Andre was added to by a whole variety of horrific injuries suffered by all involved (gouged eyes, ripped cheeks, severe blood loss, etc.), though most were thankfully not life-threatening.
Add to that terrible tally the damaged psyches of 23 children who witnessed the Xtreme Xmas carnage and, like the children themselves must now think, our Christmases may never be quite the same again.
Polly
[office]
[For more information about the rampant Cracktown gang culture and how it affects us all, please see next Tuesday’s Quicklime News pull-out “Tales From A Cracked Town”. Why not order a subscription of your favourite local paper today, and make sure you never miss the important issues affecting YOU.]
[office]
[For more information about the rampant Cracktown gang culture and how it affects us all, please see next Tuesday’s Quicklime News pull-out “Tales From A Cracked Town”. Why not order a subscription of your favourite local paper today, and make sure you never miss the important issues affecting YOU.]
"Evens" Book Extract #6
[One of a series of extracts from Leon Blackwell’s notorious autobiography “Evens”. The diary of Old Lynn’s most revered psychopath.]
(Appendix I pages)
Random Bar Room Meanderings…
A few weeks after my Mother died, I was hit with a blunt, painfully obvious observation. I was completely and utterly alone. Without any companion to call my friend or acquaintance. Gaunt, pale and nothing. Looking in the same old mirror behind the same old bar, in the same old pub, with a burning self-hatred that’s so familiar, it’s practically a close relative. What am I doing here?
Such is death. As in the “small deaths” we cope with on a regular basis, some by our own sword, some not. Not much to look forward to tomorrow, except a cheap haircut (nothing like the smell of balsalm in the morning).
You see, human beings essentially need each other to continue their existences. But what happens if the one person that you were close to dies? And what if you don’t feel very human at all, in any case?
Nothing happens – you just exist. And hog the oxygen on a day-to-day basis. I get catharsis through ending lives and writing in my journals, but maybe I don’t want catharsis tonight – there must be other things I could be doing with my life.
I once thought of a great idea for a business; “A library with a drinks license”. Simple. Ever want to drink bourbon as you read Kerouac? Now you can. Fancy a double Archers with an Archer? I practically insist. Imagine a vodka bender as you read Irvine Welsh (of all people). Guaranteed a post-closing time punch-up. You’d get existentialists with their bottles of Newcy in one corner. Get romanticists with their sherry in another. The name of such an establishment? I wanted to call it ‘Pompous Pricks’, but my friends begged to differ.
Ah. My “friends”. Good bunch. Salt of the Earth (or any other condiment you care to mention). Haven’t seen them much lately, to be honest. Too busy being selfish. As we all are when we first get a sweet taste of companionship with someone who rocks our world of lonely bitterness, and injects a healthy dose of love and passion into the mix. Compare that to talking to your friends about the hobbies of glamour models, who could resist the former? If only ______ knew how I felt about her. About how her radiant smile reaches out of the photographs I have of her, and clasps onto my needy heart.
“Downward Spiral”, “Ever Decreasing Circles”, “Round The Bend”, etc. etc. Why is it always circular? Why can’t I feel oblong tonight? Yes. That’s it. A worrying case of incompatible shapes is happening in this bar. Everyone else here seems to be bulging circles of self-absorption. And I’m an oblong. NO. Screw that. I’m an hypotamuse. We clearly don’t fit together. Listening to these people’s petty conversations in this infernal place, I can’t help but feel envious. Why can’t I get enjoyment from sitting in a bar and talking about old cars? A cranky old Ford Fiesta? I’ll have a double. A classic model of Capri? Ooh, I think I’ve spotted a real ale pump. Am I a “Pompous Prick”? Maybe. I certainly don’t get erections from hearing about dodgy carburetors.
So what does a Pompous Prick like to talk about in pubs and bars across the land? Nothing. We probably all prefer to stick our pronounced noses in our drinks and quaff to good health, with our smouldering self-hatred burning brightly eternal.
A few weeks after my Mother died, I was hit with a blunt, painfully obvious observation. I was completely and utterly alone. Without any companion to call my friend or acquaintance. Gaunt, pale and nothing. Looking in the same old mirror behind the same old bar, in the same old pub, with a burning self-hatred that’s so familiar, it’s practically a close relative. What am I doing here?
Such is death. As in the “small deaths” we cope with on a regular basis, some by our own sword, some not. Not much to look forward to tomorrow, except a cheap haircut (nothing like the smell of balsalm in the morning).
You see, human beings essentially need each other to continue their existences. But what happens if the one person that you were close to dies? And what if you don’t feel very human at all, in any case?
Nothing happens – you just exist. And hog the oxygen on a day-to-day basis. I get catharsis through ending lives and writing in my journals, but maybe I don’t want catharsis tonight – there must be other things I could be doing with my life.
I once thought of a great idea for a business; “A library with a drinks license”. Simple. Ever want to drink bourbon as you read Kerouac? Now you can. Fancy a double Archers with an Archer? I practically insist. Imagine a vodka bender as you read Irvine Welsh (of all people). Guaranteed a post-closing time punch-up. You’d get existentialists with their bottles of Newcy in one corner. Get romanticists with their sherry in another. The name of such an establishment? I wanted to call it ‘Pompous Pricks’, but my friends begged to differ.
Ah. My “friends”. Good bunch. Salt of the Earth (or any other condiment you care to mention). Haven’t seen them much lately, to be honest. Too busy being selfish. As we all are when we first get a sweet taste of companionship with someone who rocks our world of lonely bitterness, and injects a healthy dose of love and passion into the mix. Compare that to talking to your friends about the hobbies of glamour models, who could resist the former? If only ______ knew how I felt about her. About how her radiant smile reaches out of the photographs I have of her, and clasps onto my needy heart.
“Downward Spiral”, “Ever Decreasing Circles”, “Round The Bend”, etc. etc. Why is it always circular? Why can’t I feel oblong tonight? Yes. That’s it. A worrying case of incompatible shapes is happening in this bar. Everyone else here seems to be bulging circles of self-absorption. And I’m an oblong. NO. Screw that. I’m an hypotamuse. We clearly don’t fit together. Listening to these people’s petty conversations in this infernal place, I can’t help but feel envious. Why can’t I get enjoyment from sitting in a bar and talking about old cars? A cranky old Ford Fiesta? I’ll have a double. A classic model of Capri? Ooh, I think I’ve spotted a real ale pump. Am I a “Pompous Prick”? Maybe. I certainly don’t get erections from hearing about dodgy carburetors.
So what does a Pompous Prick like to talk about in pubs and bars across the land? Nothing. We probably all prefer to stick our pronounced noses in our drinks and quaff to good health, with our smouldering self-hatred burning brightly eternal.
Which brings us full circle – or full hypotamuse if you like. What AM I doing here, in the arse-end of nowhere in fucking Cracktown? Trying to find myself? I found that already, and tossed it into the floods. To relax maybe? Perhaps. If so, I am failing; I am not relaxed in the slightest. Just scared.
Yes, I’m scared. Scared of the future. I used to detest all concepts of the future so much, it was a mortal enemy that needed a good kicking. Now I fear it. To be precise, I fear this loneliness is a permanent fixture of my life to be. Even if I get caught for my dark deeds and suffer the indignity of prison, sharing space with some like-minded sociopaths. My loneliness will still go on.
That’s my fear.
The horror.
Yes, I’m scared. Scared of the future. I used to detest all concepts of the future so much, it was a mortal enemy that needed a good kicking. Now I fear it. To be precise, I fear this loneliness is a permanent fixture of my life to be. Even if I get caught for my dark deeds and suffer the indignity of prison, sharing space with some like-minded sociopaths. My loneliness will still go on.
That’s my fear.
The horror.
***********
“Evens” is available from all good bookshops now.
ISBN 1010 2020 1010 0102
£6.99 paperback.
ISBN 1010 2020 1010 0102
£6.99 paperback.
A Big Thank You To A Stranger
What with everything going on at the office these past few days, I completely forgot about my Birthday – until someone sent in a very nice gift for me. Thank you, hugs/kisses whoever you are! I will certainly treasure your Great-Grandmother’s doll, which you kindly gave me – I have it on my desk, sitting next to me as I type.
Love always!
Polly Blank xxx
[office]
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